


from the day you arrive, ill stay by your side

by gigaremo



Category: Half-Life
Genre: i honestly dunno what to tag this help me dkcnsknxs, its sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:55:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26488291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gigaremo/pseuds/gigaremo
Summary: sadstuck thought vomit from benreys creation to defeat. title frm entombed by deftones
Kudos: 11





	from the day you arrive, ill stay by your side

They meant it, on Xen.

It was among a jumble of words, a train of consciousness defined both by repressed emotions forbidden to form and by the force to demean them, to make light of every word out of their mouth. They couldn’t sound serious, couldn’t mean it. Weren’t allowed, never was. But god, did they fucking try.

They don’t wanna be bad, never did. Hurting their friends, no one wants to do that, that shit sucks. But, they didn’t get a say in the matter, held tight in line to abide by the role they were assigned since they first saw the walls of Black Mesa. Yeah, they could joke around, mess with the dial a lil, but they couldn’t outright deny it. Things stopped them, had to follow the rules. And the rules fucking sucked.

It didn’t feel like waking up (not that they would know, but still), it wasn’t even like opening your eyes. They just, boop, suddenly existed, spawned in a mini crowd of guards, all barely different, and just, dispersed. Like pigeons.

They had only a second to load in, before everything was just, dumped in their helmeted brain all at once, almost like it was pretending to have been there the whole time. And what it all was, was a small list, what they were, what they did, and what they were going to do. A premade guide, just for them.

Their feet carried them to their post, walls they’ve never seen already mapped out like the back of their hand. They hadn’t seen the back of their hand, either, but they knew they did, too. One little line, the only thing they didn’t already have an unfamiliar familiarity of was the last one, a goal instead of their current actions. Something that will happen, a pot on the back burner to come back to.

To make Gordon Freeman hate them, and for Gordon Freeman to kill them on Xen.

They didn’t know what Xen was or who Gordon Freeman was, but they also knew perfectly fine what Xen was and who Gordon Freeman was. They would've been confused if the game had let them ‘exist’ a little earlier, maybe. They didn't know, and it was true this time.

It took them weeks to meet Gordon; they couldn't go out and find him, though they had a constant pinpoint of where he was exactly, no, he had to find them.

Well, less find, more walk past like every other guard in Black Mesa. Of course he would, the game wouldn't just tell him that they were different, to give him any consideration versus the sea of near identical guards dotting Black Mesa.

Would be a real shit game to just up and spoil itself, y’know?

They kept seeing him, his duties passing him by whenever his current project said so. Sometimes he was in a rush, seemingly late as he power walked to some random door (that they also knew exactly what it housed). Sometimes he was upset, heavy brows furrowed in a way that seemed to match the scowl on his face, harsher than the knit brows paired with pursed lips. But they had a favorite, one they didn't understand any better than the rest (it was all from what scientists would say, guide didn't include how to read emotions).

When he smiled. Something about the crease in the corner of his eyes and the way his lips stretched over slightly crooked teeth, sometimes he’d even laugh with it, too. It was nice in a way they had no words for, no concept or context, just, a budding thought.

A thought he’d often forget, learn again, and repeat. The snake eats its own tail, the bad guy keeps budding with a warmth put out by the code decreeing.

And as time passed (not that he understood, sometimes lights just turned off while scientists pathed to the dorms, they’d come back with the lights, repeat), they found themselves straying away. The rules allowed this, however, and he was able to freely wander around once he realized he could.

The freedom felt nice (not that they knew).

No one really commented on it, some would pass him a glance as he walked by their peripheral, but just turned right back; at most, he’d get ushered away for ‘snooping’, whatever that was. Seems some places were still outta reach, for some reason.

One time they saw Gordon, head down in his crossed arms on a table in the break room, a cup of cold coffee sitting half drank while he let out this loud sound. They didn't know what it was, just that it seemed to be synced with his breathing. Helped keep an eye to make sure he was alive. It wasn't until he started shifting to move his head up that they stepped out, slinking away to stand near the entrance.

They didn't need to, technically, and maybe it would start up Gordon hating them, like the list said he needed to. But they didn't wanna be scolded for ‘snooping’ again; something about being denied from somewhere after tasting the freedom of aimless wandering made them feel heavy, and they didn't wanna hear it from Gordon. For some reason.

They started doing it, too, when the rooms emptied out with dimmed lights, letting their heavy head sit cradled in their arms. They didn't get it, and making loud noises didn't seem to affect anything about it, either. But, there was a peace found in just, sitting down and doing nothing. Hell, they never sat down before this, always on their feet. Felt good.

After more lights flicked on and off, they wandered into one of the break rooms to see someone new; technically no one was new, clones with some variations to make the same faces a little less suspicious. But, this scientist was, different, face smoother than the other ones, both in hair on his face and wrinkles in his skin, and face covered in dark little dots, like Gordons but less crowded. They were intrigued, another new taste.

This one didn't comment when he was a bit close, instead flashing him a smile. It was nice, lil dots twinning on the sides.

Was this one special? Like Gordon? He had no name pop into his head, even when those yellow eyes lined with his. They were almost upset by this; someone new, whose face deviated enough that he couldn't have been a clone, who didn't shoo him off when most others would, and who smiled - not just in general, but at him.

He did something new, himself, too; he spoke outside of the presence of Gordon.

“I-d-ent-i-fi-ca-tion.”

It was awkward, each sound pieced together from previous scripted lines they've said around him, a verbal ransom note sewed together like a child's craft project. Beyond that even it still sounded awful, like he was speaking through a walkie talkie. 

And it worked.

The scientist looked, confused? Shocked? Like they didn't know they could do that (they didn't, either). They kept up the stare, unblinking with a frozen face. Then they blinked hard once, twice. Another pause, this time with eyes drifted off to the side of their head as they opened their mouth.

“What?”

They returned a blink, slow, but content that they had one ready, no cutting up needed.

“Name.”

Their face stilled again, a beat before answering.

“Tommy.” Another hard blink. “Your’s?”

Huh.

Did the guide really never pop one of those in?

They stood straight, relieving, Tommy, of their face inches away from his, after they crouched down to investigate their fun little find.

Tipping their head a bit back, they found a whole list of names, a database, even. But they were all names they've already seen scientists or guards with, some of them twice, even. The rules nudged, saying they wouldn't do, that they needed something ‘unique’.

Well, maybe you should've thought of adding something ‘unique’ when you dumped them into a random hallway in a flock of guards, but sure, make it their problem. Asshole.

He ended up picking out two names, right next to each other in the alphabetized list.

“Ben-rey.”

Benrey soon realized, later in that lights on cycle, that Tommy was one of a new batch; a whole nother group of scientists of the near same build with the near same faces. To give credit where credit is due, they did have more variation than the other ones, but that's not hard to achieve.

He also found himself finding Tommy more, in one of a few different-but-identical break rooms. Even if Tommy wasn't really a new ‘special character’ and was just another scientist to pad out the labs and hallways, he had a name, one poked out by Benrey’s curiosity, and he smiled, too.

Benrey liked when others smiled at him, he realized.

It was still all awkward at first, bare meetings composed of broken up words cherry-picked out of existing dialogue, but they both tried. And they both got better, words strung by string slowly stitching together into cleaner sounds. It was nice.

And it felt even nicer that Benrey was allowed to feel nice. That he could do this and not get punished with empty space later, and that Tommy could remember, too.

Tommy wasn't allowed to wander as much, only in break rooms when all the other scientists were on break (suppose that's what the rooms are for, huh), but Benrey came to feel. Excited? when they could see him.

Unlike Tommy, though, for some reason Benrey still struggled with a lot of words, and especially with relaying feelings. They supposed that the scientists were allowed more reactions, whereas guards just kinda get to be assholes who shoot at stuff if needed (and they haven't had to, yet). This made it that much harder to communicate, Benrey struggling on forbidden words expressing the warmth they felt getting to see Tommy.

(It took them a long, long time to realize that struggle was rooted also in the game holding them back again. Bad guys can't be happy about good things, you gotta be happy about bad things.)

Tommy started helping a bit, workshopping with them on how they could express what they couldn't say, and in the desperation of them, one whose presence will be a constant and another who was pushed past his base, the game decided to throw them a bone.

The two realized that the soda and snack machines actually worked (you needed to hit them, which upset the other scientists, but it never had any long-lasting consequences, so who gives a shit), and enjoyed the fruit of their harassing-a-machine labor. And from this, the game put two and two together.

One day, in a conversation not even related to Benrey’s struggle, Tommy started staring wide-eyed at his mouth (he tried not to think too much on the warmth that gave him (the game helped)), and he looked down. Small balls of purple floated around him, and blue ones followed suit, creating a pretty gradient that cast a slight cool glow on his face and in Tommy’s eyes (he really liked that).

Neither spoke, but it started happening more and more, colors shifting and balls appearing even when not talking; sometimes they’d find themselves looking at yellow when bickering or explosions sounded off from behind closed doors they weren't allowed in. And if the game hadn't stifled them yet, pink when they saw Gordon (they started to stifle those themselves, though, after Gordon saw a stray one once and made a face that didn't seem happy. It made him stop smiling).

They found they could will them forth, too; carrying a note seemed to express what they felt whenever they wanted to. They had to be careful as to not incur a noise complaint, but they got the hang of timing down after a while, they think.

That or everyone else realized that he was just gonna be an annoying freak, sometimes.

Speaking of being a freak, Benrey noticed something off about himself compared to the other guards, beyond the slight variations among them; he changed. As time droned on, he noticed deep purple half circles forming beneath his eyes, and his hair started protesting its confinement to his helmet, slowly creeping out.

When it started to threaten his eyesight, he took to using his pocket knife to shorten it back down closer to his hairline. It worked well enough.

And even still, they grew harsher, more alien against the relative monotony amongst the other guards. The more scientists spoke about some big important test, the tighter their skin hugged cheekbones, the deeper their eyes started sinking inward, the more naked their brows became, the more knobby their knuckles and elbows sharpened. They didn't care much, and seemingly neither did Tommy, it was just a detail they caught on to.

Maybe it would make it easier for Gordon to dislike him. To hate him. If he looked less human, more grotesque. It made sense, given his role. He was practically a monster.

Didn't mean he had to like it, though. Good thing the game kept brushing those thoughts out of his head. Made things more complicated than they needed to be.

As the date of the test neared, they grew restless. Their thoughts were mean, took up all the room they had made for liking Gordon. Replaced any warmth with this frigid, bitter, mean taste. Made red and blues drip from their lips when thoughts found themselves recalling his name, his face.

His smile, his laugh. If the game hadn't started putting it's foot down, he would've been real sad about it. But, bad guys don't get to be sad. Not this one, at least.

The second Gordon rounded the hallway on the day of, calling out a greeting, Benrey's coded nerves twitched him forward. Got his attention, and worked to make his brows do the angry thing, make the corner of his lips get tugged down, raise his voice as he stared at Benrey.

A part of them still itched, still wanted to pull back, say ‘just kidding!’ and let him go like nothing. But the games given them enough wiggle room for feeling nice, time to buck up and be a fucking asshole like they outta be.

With the game shoving down the now much smaller part of himself that wanted to defy the rules, he could poke, prod, pester, and any other word about being annoying starting with a p Gordon all he wanted with remorse tugging at his nonexistent stomach.

They got yelled at a lot. He would get in their face, jab their chest, hold them still by the shoulders, push them, direct his anger from Benrey following the bullshit rules right back at them. They couldn't blame them. Still fucking sucked.

This went on until, something bad happened. Something the stupid game didn't account for just like giving its bad guy a damn name.

Gordon could die. Shot through the forehead point blank by some military guy with good aim, crumpled right down into the dirt as a disgusting rattle gurgled out before everything seemed to just. Stop.

And, like them all, if the player gamesover, then the game doesn't get played anymore. And death was a big ass game over.

Good thing the morning of the test was a save point.

And so this repeated. And repeated. And repeated. A seemingly endless snake of Gordon walking to the test chamber after arriving to work late, to his last breaths cracking into a wheeze before the record scratched.

Benrey's brain, if code could be called that, started to push against the rules more and more. The part of him that cared, it forced itself more room for Gordon. With every smile, every laugh, it got bigger. When they were pointed in his direction, it seemed to yell out in victory with slips of pink.

And every time he died. Every time Benrey watched Gordon’s life drain away before getting reset. The part of them that cared, it ached. It hurt more than seeing the fresh scars that stuck even after resets, than when he yelled in their face, even when he hit them, punched them. Shot them.

But the game started to employ a new lil tactic, fresh from its bag of tricks. And Benrey didn't fight it; honestly, it was like balm for burns, made him forget the pain even existed. In fact, it did exactly that. Took the part that cared about the man he was made to be killed by, and turned it off. If the game couldn't wipe it, it could blind him from it.

They still sometimes felt it again, and the return was worse. So, so much fucking worse.

The game had already started it by the first time they all got to the betrayal. It clouded them through it, let them be as bad as they were made to be. But, not too long after, they could see again. And they hated it.

They were hazy coming back in, like the game maybe fuzzed their mind up a lil more than intended, so they could barely recall what event they ghosted through. Even when staring down at Gordon's new stump, bone jutting out, flesh already beginning to become infected and leaking puss, their code hadn't quite caught up. And they asked, because they honestly didn't understand.

They're still surprised Gordon didn't sock them right there. Maybe his left hand was too shaky to do the job.

Benrey started tapping into that fuzz; when finding the switch, instead of fighting it, they turned it on themselves. Whenever they knew something awful was gonna happen, they herded the fog in, let autopilot coding take the reins for a bit.

It hurts, to do shit you don't wanna but are forced to. It fucking sucks. But if fighting back doesn't work, sometimes you just gotta. Clock out, close your eyes and plug your ears and let what's gotta happen, happen. Not like you can do fuck all, otherwise.

He just had to block out memories, too. Scenes of him and Gordon laughing, together, and happy. Gordon slinging an arm around his shoulders, praising him for doing a good job, showing him that face that he's started to figure out is ‘concern’. Gordon smiling, no, sometimes even beaming at him.

Benrey tries not to remember the time he wasn't there and came to shortly after having knocked a tooth out of Gordon's mouth.

They even try adopting tactics when aware; started figuring out what Gordon didn't like specific to them. He didn't like when they smiled so big all their teeth showed, when they laughed extra hard and it came out a witch's cackle, when they got in his space when he didn't start it. Somehow, they stumbled upon his hatred of offered or even suggested kisses, face blowing up that intense red and fumbled yelling about how he doesn’t want to, a loud rejection.

They tried to ignore how it stung them weirdly. Good guys don't kiss bad guys, what were they expecting?

But, in it all, they had solace. Tommy didn't remember anything, either, but they were friends before the test, so he could count on him to be there. To smile at him.

Thank god he didn't have to be mean to Tommy. 

He took shelter in the warmth of Tommy’s hand in his own, in the way his eyes glowed even in the shadows as they looked at him, in the way he understood them, cared about him. Even when the game was hellbent on making him awful, molding him into the devil in spite of fighting hands and cracked screams to be anything but, Tommy was there.

Tommy likes mean people.

They weren’t really expecting Gordon to get a gun hand, neither did anyone else, it seemed. Him using it to shoot and punch them around wasn’t surprising, he had a perfectly good way to toss them around after all the shit they put him through, it’s pretty fair, honestly. But it still didn’t feel good.

They didn’t mean it. They promise.

Going through those final hours, it was grueling. It felt like forcing oneself to walk through thorns, dragging over the skin, clawing and breaking at the flesh, knowing going further in it was only going to get worse. But they couldn’t stop it. They wanted to, so badly did they want to take Gordon by the hand, make him stop, tell him they could all just stay there.

But they couldn’t. Game forced their feet to keep moving forth, like a windup toy headed for the edge of the table, powerless to stop the descent.

Not like Gordon would've listened, anyways. Who listens to the bad guy?

So, they trudged onward.

When they saw the portal, they were scared. Scared for Gordon, they knew what hell they were able to have to throw him around before he could ‘win’. What memories he’d be scarred with once he was done.

Scared for themselves. Scared to see themselves do that to him, to them all. Scared to hurt them, to mock them at such a scale.

Selfish.

When they popped in on the other side, they felt tense and limp all at once. A mean filter took fog over his mind, limbs moved without though, without intent.

A puppet. They weren’t trusted to their job anymore, so the game tied little invisible strings to them and made him abide by the rules.

Those shitty fucking rules.

Seeing Gordon scream, pretty green eyes wide in horror trapped under their shadow, how he ran with such urgency, how his voice cracked.

Benrey was scary. They wanted so deeply to halt themselves, to be small again, to cradle him in a hug like Tommy had whenever pear greens started to fog around them, to tell him that everything was okay.

To fucking bad.

Kneeling in the blood of that wretched planet, staring down at Gordon, words manipulated from mind to mouth, not allowed to be genuine for even a second. It was humiliating, looking down at the anger and confusion in his face, understanding why he was while refused to make sense.

And the face when he cracked, morphed, bones breaking, reforming, fusing, growing, skin stretching and tearing, eyes sprouting along skin like cysts, the inhuman sound of deformation. The face that hundreds of eyes looked upon as too many hands thrashed around, grappling to meaty walls and swiping out at them all. The face as multiple voices screamed out, all antagonistic, reverbing all around in a dance of burning color, cackles like a hyena ringing in his head.

It was fear. It was anger. And it was vindication.

When Gordon was sent back, when they shadowed him through the yet-bloodied halls of Black Mesa, as loud as they jeered, as scratching their cackle echoed, they were allowed a small kindness. To sit back, and make Gordon’s final passport, his own, a breeze to shoot to pieces. To give him the room, literally, and just watch him destroy it.

They didn’t wanna drag it out any longer. They were getting sick of this.

It was time to end this.

Bullets rang out, fist bruising malformed flesh, fire burning skin, screams and shouts of multiple voices filling the ears. Animalistic screeches, claws tearing at the host, a lightshow carried out by howls, a body breaking down at the seams under an onslaught. A bright flash of green, a second one, blinding to the hundreds of eyes bleeding out, half-hearted pleas of defeat as the mass was sucked away, green lightning cracking around and stealing with it the final act.

Finally.

And now, here they lay. All alone. Trapped frozen like a statue, half submerged in their own viscera, mouth leaking technicolor like a broken faucet, unpunctured eyes forced open, unable to blink, dozens of clawed hands grasping at the throat, ripping the flesh off in still chunks. And in front, albeit backwards, was the final message, bright as a sun and mocking them all the while relieving them.

Benrey was killed, beaten in a flourish of gunfire and teamwork. And what do you get when you beat the final boss?

YOU WIN!


End file.
